


Summer Revelations

by laurissy



Category: Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Coming Out, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:01:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21594229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurissy/pseuds/laurissy
Summary: Just a bit of fluff about Esteban accidentally discovering his son's bi and how he handles it. Also how he worries about his sons and wants what's best for them (Just an FYI I reference American politics quite specifically a couple of times and if you're a maga. You may not appreciate it. It's very mild reference though.) Hope you enjoy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 56





	Summer Revelations

It was a lazy summer on a lazy Sunday. Everyone was hot and stupid which was why Esteban had to go into work on a Sunday to fix a car belonging to a kid that had crashed into a lamppost. The Kid had been drunk, high and was receiving a blow job at the time. Luckily both boys were undamaged and white, so they had received a caution for this mess. Unfortunately for the boys the car was badly damaged, but it was fixable. However, driver kid’s mom wasn’t particularly happy with this situation and having to spend a considerable amount of money to fix this mess. Whilst it was understandable that she would be upset by her son’s recklessness. She kept insisting that her son had a girlfriend whom he loved very much and was going to get over this phase soon. This would have been annoying but fine, but she also had a Make America hat on whilst insisting that all this nonsense was because of the media that had caused his son to give into temptation. She also clearly didn’t trust the Latinos that were fixing her car and insisted on being around so that she wouldn’t be ripped off. He strongly considered telling her to fuck off several times but unfortunately her money was just good enough to make this worth it.

He approached his drive feeling drained frustrated and angry. He looked at his neighbour’s house which had a make America great again sign displayed prominently in his yard. It hurt every time to see it. He’d thought about putting up a Clinton sign, but it wasn’t worth antagonising his neighbour. No, he’d vote come November and he hoped that would be enough. He wanted to believe this country that he’d spent most of his life in wouldn’t reject him and his family for the sin of being brown. Not for the first time he wished his children looked more like their mother at least then…

“Daniel, give it back.” He heard from inside the house and feeling his neighbour already writing his noise complaint rushed into the house.

“You promised if I did the dishes, I could play hot dawg man.” Daniel yelled

He opened the door to see Sean in a standoff against Daniel. “What’s going on?” he interjected.

“Dad, I did the dishes and now Sean won’t let me have his phone.” Daniel whined appealing directly to his father which was a bit of a mistake because it allowed to Sean to grab him.

“He’s a liar Dad.” Sean told him but as Daniel tried to free himself the phone leaped out of Daniel’s hand and landed straight into the washing up water.

Sean immediately let go and fished his phone out of the water. “It’s fucking ruined.” And he threw it to the floor luckily Esteban had the presence of mind to catch it. “Fuck this.” He then marched to his room. Daniel looked at his Dad with a sad look on his face.

“What happened?” Esteban said calmly

“Sean said if I did the dishes he’d let me play hot dawg man so I did them but he said I hadn’t picked up all of the dishes and that I hadn’t cleaned them well enough so he wouldn’t give it to me, he said that I was being a brat but I’d done the dishes so I should get to play hot dawg man and then…” Daniel told him breathlessly, his eyes glistening slightly.

“Well, we best fix this then.” Esteban told him “We’re Diazs we’re good at fixing things.” This made Daniel smile and they set about taking apart the phone and getting rid of as much water as they could before placing it in some rice.

“Do you think this will work?” Daniel asked.

“It should” Esteban replied, “Now make sure you clean those dishes, I want them to sparkle.”

Daniel was about to protest but his father gave him a look. The look had a 50-60% success rate but this time it worked, and he set about cleaning the dishes.

The phone had been resting in the rice all night. As Esteban took it out, he felt like a surgeon, he could feel the sweat on his brow.

“Please let this work” Daniel said beside him.

“Well Doctor Diaz, it is time to attempt resuscitation.” Esteban said gravely with a bit of caution he pressed the on button and he’d never been happier to hear a phone jingle.

“We did it, Dad.” Daniel said happily.

“Hold on we need to do a thorough check up.” Esteban said, “We’re not out of the danger zone yet.”

Esteban then realised that he wasn’t going to get past the lock screen but then he looked at Daniel and Daniel put the code in. Daniel shrugged at his father. Esteban sighed and made a mental note to have a talk about privacy and boundaries.

He checked out his contacts everything seemed to be working, hot dawg man worked fine. It looked like this phone was going to live another day.

“Another patient saved, Doctor Diaz.”

Daniel smiled “Do you think Sean will forgive me? “

“Of course, he will you’re his baby brother.”

Daniel looked at his Dad sheepishly “Can you give it back? I don’t want him to yell at me.”

“OK but you do have to apologise” Esteban insisted.

“Fine” he knocked on Sean’s door “Sorry Sean, your phone’s fixed.” Then he scampered of to his own room.

Esteban smiled and continued tapping the phone, just seeing it all worked. But as he clicked one of the icons a picture came up and he turned the phone away from him. Well that was weird. There was a part of him that wanted to just put the phone down. Sean’s phone was Sean’s business. He could put whatever pictures he wanted on there. But he turned the phone back toward him. It was indeed what he thought he’d seen the first time. That was two naked men. Thoughts ran through Esteban’s head. It could just be an art thing. He pressed the triangle in the middle of the screen and the situation played out as you’d expect. Esteban searched through his brain and realised that he didn’t really have any idea how to handle finding your son’s porn and it not being the gender you were expecting.

Esteban sat on the couch and ran through every interaction he’d ever had with his son. He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Did it? Rather ashamedly his first thought was that he didn’t seem gay. Sean hadn’t had a proper girlfriend yet but that was fine. His son was a late bloomer, but he’d eventually get a girlfriend when he was ready. Then he realised that was the problem he’d never even thought about it being a possibility. What if his son feared being rejected by him after everything, he’d been through with his mom?

“Can I have it back?” He heard Sean say breaking him out of his mediation.

“Of course, Daniel worked quite hard on fixing that.” Esteban told him and hurriedly got rid of the video which he realised he’d been lucky that it had been on mute.

“Well if he hadn’t had been such a brat, it wouldn’t have broken.” He retorted grumpily. He took the phone and seemed satisfied that everything worked.

“Are you working today?” Sean asked.

Unfortunately, the answer was yes, and he was already a little late because of the phone. He wanted to have an honest conversation with his son about what he saw. Then he realised it was difficult to have an honest conversation with information he’d obtained from snooping. But what if his son needed guidance about this or maybe he didn’t. What did Esteban Diaz know about being gay?

“Yeah well Lyla’s coming over.” Sean said not sure why his Dad wasn’t responding.

“That’s great, um I’ve got to go to work.” Esteban replied looking at his son hoping there would be a cue that would tell him what the best thing to do was. Sean looked confused and went past him to go get breakfast.

Esteban not sure what else to do left in a daze and was a predictable mess. His colleagues were sympathetic but a little irritated. They respected him enough to leave him to it without prying. They knew that he’d let them know in time if something was seriously wrong. But he wasn’t sure if anything was wrong. His son was gay. This was the 21st century. There’s nothing wrong with that. But he wasn’t convinced of that especially when someone put on the news.

“Please turn it of” Esteban said trying to focus.

He could not handle that orange idiot today. At first, he’d found him funny and made jokes about him. It had been fun but then his neighbour bought the hat. But it wasn’t enough to buy the hat. He made sure that Esteban knew he had the hat. Then he’d seen how big the rallies were and how angry some of the people being interviewed were. Then there was the day Daniel came home with a bloody nose. It wasn’t funny after that. The world was changing even his little corner of it.

One of his colleagues did so but added “No point putting your fingers in your ears, this guy’s going to win like it or not.”

He managed to focus up just enough to get on with his job and then went home and it was more peaceful than it was yesterday. He went inside and Daniel was instructing Lyla on how to play his new game on the playbox. Sean was on the sofa too with a bag of chips. He smiled as he looked at them. They were all so innocent and he almost forgot everything he’d been worrying about.

“So, any chance you’re going to let your poor hardworking father have a go?” Esteban asked them.

Daniel looked up to his father and then at Lyla. On the one hand he wanted to show Lyla all he knew about the game, so she’d be impressed with his skills. On the other hand, he loved playing with his Dad. He looked at both trying to decide which he valued more but the choice was taken out of his hands.

“It’s ok Papa Diaz, I need to go now, anyway” she told them then she looked directly at Daniel “Thank you Daniel for taking the time to show me, I had a lot of fun.” Daniel blushed and Sean groaned and gave his friend a “seriously” look. Lyla gave her friend I don’t care what you think look.

He was about to head to the sofa and grab the controller but then he had an idea. “Um Lyla do you want a lift back to your house.”

“No, it’s ok, I’m fine walking.”

“Don’t be silly I’ll give you a lift, you don’t want to be walking in all this heat.”

“Thanks Mr Diaz.”

Daniel looked crestfallen at both of his playing partners leaving.

“Hey, you can play with your brother until I get back.” Neither Sean nor Daniel looked that enthused by the idea.

This was great. Lyla was someone he could ask about his discovery and what it meant. There was no one who knew Sean better and he knew he could trust her. His hands were on the steering wheel and he struggled to come up with the words. It seemed so odd and it hit him that asking for advice from a teenager wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Before he knew it, they were at Lyla’s.

“Thanks Mr Diaz.”

“No wait.”

She waited but looked confused and Esteban looked at her and tried to say something.

“Are you ok?” she asked her face filled with concern.

“Yes, I’m fine it’s just I found something and” Esteban tried to explain.

“Fuck you found Sean’s porn.” Lyla exclaimed.

“How did you know?”

“To be honest Mr Diaz, he doesn’t have anything else worth finding.”

Esteban was weirdly pleased by that statement. There were worse things he’d thought of his son being involved in. Cults, hard drugs, misogynistic trolling but the worse thing was according to his friend was that he had gay porn on his phone.

“So which porn was it, well it has to be the dude porn we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you’d seen the girl porn.”

“He has girl porn.”

“Yeah he’s bi.” Lyla admitted.

Esteban looked at her and felt bad this possibility hadn’t crossed his mind and he wasn’t sure how to process this. This was something he hadn’t even thought about till now, He could almost feel his brain trying to make room so he could process this, “Umm I don’t know what I should do.”

“So, you found this out when you were fixing his phone?”

“Yes”

“Sean doesn’t know.”

“No”

“Ok I realise this isn’t going to be easy but you’re going to have to wait.”

“Ok.” Esteban replied not being able to hide the disappointment. He was hoping that they could get this all out in the open. Have a mature conversation and they’d be able to guide each other on how to support each other.

“It’s just he’s not really comfortable with other people knowing.” Lyla admitted, seeing the disappointment in Esteban’s face. She also wanted Sean to come out just so she’d be able to see how it was done but they were both too chicken right now. Especially as Lyla had only just got back from the asylum. She was more out than Sean as she’d kissed another girl but to reveal it to her family that was going to be rough. “Please don’t think this is about you, it’s really not, he loves you but...”

“He doesn’t trust me.” Esteban stated. It wasn’t surprising but it stung. He’d been trying so hard to develop a sense of trust with his son. He really wanted to believe they’d tell him anything.

“It’s not that, I don’t think he even knows what he wants, and he’s worried about… look I can’t get into it.” Lyla admitted. She’d listened to Sean’s worries for the past two years. He was worried how the track team would treat him if they knew. He was worried that if he came out, he’d turn of girls he liked. Truth be told he was worried how his father would react. He’d told her deep down he knew his dad was going to be cool, but he was worried that his father would treat this as another thing his dad had to worry about which in fairness Sean seemed to be accurate.

“I appreciate that.”

“Thanks, urrnmm, well this is awkward.”

“Yeah I know it’s just this isn’t something I ever thought I’d have to deal with, and I don’t want this to be a thing that comes between us just because I don’t understand it.” Esteban admitted putting his head on the steering wheel.

“Mr Diaz, don’t worry, he loves you even if it’s lame.” She paused “I’ll send you some links to things but be cool for the moment.” She’s had found some sites ages ago that were supposed to be for her parents.

“Thanks Lyla.”

She smiled and left, and he drove back to his house and even though his neighbour’s sign was still there. It seemed paler than it did yesterday. He couldn’t control the future and there was a limit to how much he could protect his sons from it. His sons were inevitably going to be different from him and it wasn’t until today he realised how different they could be from him. He hoped Sean would share his troubles and problems with him, but he wasn’t entitled to them and whilst that was frustrating, he had to respect that. He just had to hope that he’d given them a strong enough foundation they’d be able to handle whatever the future threw at them.


End file.
